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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26331184">like an early warning</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/remindmeofthe/pseuds/remindmeofthe'>remindmeofthe</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>like an early warning [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Child Death, Canonical Character Death, Gen, can be read as gen or pre-yennskier, cornered and making bad decisions, i know which one i meant but i'm not here to tell you how to live your life, no beta we die like kalis, sorry but i didn't write this to save anyone</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-07</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 13:15:34</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,213</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26331184</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/remindmeofthe/pseuds/remindmeofthe</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p><i>The second portal spits them out onto a little nothing road with a little nothing village barely in sight.</i>  Yennefer picks up an additional passenger in her efforts to save Queen Kalis and the baby princess during 1x04, "Banquets, Bastards, and Burials."</p><p>Inspired by <a href="https://bamf-jaskier.tumblr.com/post/628172984567431168/yennskier-travel-companion-au">this excellent tumblr post</a> suggesting an AU in which one of Yennefer's portals drops them near Posada. According to the official timeline, this part of Yennefer's story happens in the same year that Jaskier and Geralt meet in Posada.</p><p>Title is from Delta Rae's "Bottom of the River." A good chunk of the dialogue is from the episode with the help of this <a href="https://transcripts.fandom.com/wiki/Of_Banquets,_Bastards_and_Burials">transcript</a>.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Jaskier | Dandelion &amp; Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>like an early warning [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1977370</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>95</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>like an early warning</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>As Yennefer opens the second portal, she casts her mental net wider, stops trying for any particular type of landing. The more random she goes, the more precious time she can buy before they’re found again. Anywhere on land will do.</p><p>This portal spits them out onto a little nothing road with a little nothing village barely in sight.  In the sudden quiet, she hears and ignores a startled yelp, focusing on Kalis.</p><p>“We’re being tracked!” She rips the necklace from the queen’s neck, checking through the beads before discarding it. “Think! What did the king give you that could be traced?”</p><p>Kalis tries to help, her breaths verging on frantic sobs now, but she can only do so much holding on to her daughter. She looks around wildly, then shouts,</p><p>“You!  Over here!”</p><p>Yennefer yanks at one of the queen’s gloves to look for concealed jewelry, counts the seconds in her head. Listens with half an ear.</p><p>“Me?” A man, young, surprised.</p><p>“Who else? Now!” Kalis’s demand falls short of regal, but the desperation comes across well enough.  “I am Queen Kalis of Aedirn and I <i>order</i> you!”</p><p>“Y - Your Majesty? How can I help?” The man is closer, almost suddenly so to Yennefer; she looks up sharply, ready to shove him back.</p><p>He is young, eyes wide and posture just so, silken doublet with a lute case strapped to his back. Foolish, nobility playing at traveling bard. He could be a trap, but she doesn’t have time to evaluate the odds. The real threat is too close behind them.</p><p>“Take her!” Kalis shoves the baby at the bard, who fumblingly accepts the bundle even as he protests. Unburdened, Kalis turns her focus to herself, yanking off her other glove and pulling out her earrings.</p><p>Yennefer throws her own order at the bard: “Check her, find anything that shouldn’t be on a baby and throw it away!” If he listens, it might help; if not, they won’t be any worse off.</p><p>“I - O - Okay!”</p><p>Yennefer pulls a comb and some pins from Kalis’s hair, feels a pulse of chaos, turns as the bard starts yammering anew -</p><p>“She’s - excuse me - she’s, she’s not, I don’t think <i>oh Melitele</i>!”</p><p>They’re out of time.  </p><p>The bard’s babbling turns into a shriek as the krallach lunges for him. Yennefer freezes it in mid-air to give the bard space to scramble away from it with his precious cargo, staggering a little as it stops more easily than she’d braced for. She reaches out with her other hand to open a portal, shouting,</p><p>“I can’t hold it! <i>Hurry!</i>”</p><p>Yennefer feels the drag of an extra body on the portal, a deeper pull on her magic; when it drops them into a desert again, this one more rock than sand, she turns to see the bard just barely clearing the portal as it closes, the princess unclaimed by her mother and still in his arms.  He stumbles as he lands, falling to his knees and clutching her against him as he joins Kalis in emptying his stomach.</p><p>Fuck.</p><p>Yennefer just managed that portal with the drain of holding the krallach in place. She won’t recover fast enough to take herself, two other adults, and a baby through another one in the the next few minutes. This will have to end here.</p><p>Kalis is sobbing dryly in terror as she pulls herself up without so much as glancing toward her daughter. “Get up, you useless witch!  How could you not foresee this? You were supposed to protect me!”</p><p>The bard has eyes for nothing but the baby, staying on his knees as he croons to her softly, head bowed.</p><p>This will have to end here, one way or another.</p><p>Yennefer gets to her feet, breathing deeply as the assassin arrives behind them, far faster this time.</p><p>“Please,” Kalis begs. “I can give him a boy!” Now, <i>now</i>, she looks to her daughter.  “Take her instead!”</p><p>The bard looks up, his face the very picture of shock. “What?”</p><p>“Put her down!” Kalis hisses at him before turning back to the assassin. The krallach is near motionless at his side. “Take her as a sacrifice.  Him too, if you like.”</p><p>The airless choking sound the bard makes as he leans away from them, clutching the girl even closer - she’ll suffocate if he’s not careful - would be funny under different circumstances.</p><p>It might still be funny now. There is at least a smile tugging at Yennefer’s mouth as she looks away from Kalis and beckons to the bard. He shoots a frantic look from her to the assassin, then ducks his head instinctively as a projectile flies.</p><p>It opens Kalis’s throat.</p><p>She falls.</p><p>“<i>Bard</i>!” Yennefer opens one more portal, hoping the queen’s death will be enough, hoping she can get them all through, hoping -</p><p>The assassin’s chaos dissipates as they flee.</p><p>Yennefer collapses, spent, into a field of yellow wildflowers. She’d like to stay down for a while, steadying her breath and feeling her magic begin to right itself, but she’s not alone. She’s not alone and she knows nothing about the man who followed her.</p><p>Nothing except -</p><p>Nothing important.</p><p>She pulls herself up, slower than she’d like. The bard is closer than she’d like, kneeling amidst the flowers, cradling the baby with a tenderness that makes no sense. It makes no sense until he looks up at Yennefer’s movement with blue eyes full of tears.</p><p>(She didn’t start to hope for anything else as Kalis fell.  She didn’t.)</p><p>He’s shaking his head.  “She’s not . . . she - I’m sorry.”</p><p>He’s <i>sorry</i>.</p><p>Yennefer raises a hand, fury surging through her -</p><p>and remembers Kalis’s hard, clumsy landing after the first portal to the wrong side of a sand dune, one hand flung out to catch herself as the other clutched the baby awkwardly to her chest.  A bad landing, perhaps a small head unsupported at a crucial moment -</p><p>- silence on that little nothing road, silence instead of the screams of a frightened baby - the relative ease of stopping the krallach’s attack on the <i>princess</i>, not on the bard, an attack it didn’t try to repeat -</p><p>Yennefer never checked to see if the baby had survived that first landing. Why would she have? Wouldn’t the child’s own mother have <i>noticed</i> if something was wrong?</p><p>The bard is cringing away from Yennefer, still clinging to the tiny body in his arms.  </p><p>Yennefer lets her hand drop.  The bard’s eyes are squeezed shut in anticipation of his impending demise; when it doesn’t come, he opens them cautiously, then relaxes with a gasp.</p><p>“She was already -“</p><p>Yennefer cuts him off flatly.  “I know.”</p><p>“Yes,” he says faintly.  “Yes, I - I <i>am</i> sorry.”  Carefully, the bard lays the little bundle down at Yennefer’s feet, then stands up.  “I’ll just - I’ll give you a moment, shall I?” he offers, and turns his back to her with a deliberate air as he wanders off into the flowers.</p><p>Yennefer drops to her knees and starts to dig, using her hands instead of magic, feeling roots tear and small rocks scrape her fingers. When there’s a shallow hole of just the right size, she stops, and she sits. She sits, and she gazes out across the field.</p><p>Eventually, she starts to talk.</p><p>“I’m sorry you didn’t have a life. But if truth be told you’re not missing much. I know it’s easy for me to say with warm breath in my lungs, and you with nothing. Still - what would you have had? Parents? Well, they’re the ones who wrote your last act, so not much lost there. Friends? Most likely fair-weather. Lovers? Fun for a bit, I’ll admit, but all eventually disappoint. </p><p>“And let’s face it, you’re a girl. Your mother was right about one thing. We’re just vessels. And even when we’re told we’re special, as I was, as you would have been, we’re still just vessels for them to take . . . and take . . . until we’re empty and alone.”  She looks down, finally, at the little girl next to her, and picks her up. “So, count yourself lucky. You’ve cheated the game and won without even knowing it. Sleep well.”</p><p>It’s not much of a eulogy, if it is one at all. But it’s more of the truth than anyone ever cared enough to give to her, and it’s all she’s got to give to this girl who has no use for it.</p><p>She places the body into its grave. She smooths the loose dirt into place and presses over it the clods held together with roots.  She sits a while longer. She’d use the time to think, but she doesn’t have to, because she knows the answer to the question she’d be asking.</p><p>They can find themselves another vessel.</p><p>Gradually, she becomes aware of music, strings plucked gently in a sober melody.  She’d forgotten about the bard.</p><p>Yennefer doesn’t know yet where she’s going to go next or what she’ll do when she gets there. It would be easier to figure it out alone.</p><p>The music stops; she looks up. The bard is making his way over, lute back in its case.</p><p>“Who are you?” she asks abruptly. Her voice feels rough in her ears.</p><p>He doesn’t answer right away. Instead, he kneels, placing a handful of buttercups on the bare dirt. Then he smiles slightly, looking up.</p><p>“I’m Jaskier.”</p><p>“Sure,” Yennefer says, “why not,” and she opens a portal.</p><p>*</p><p>She takes them nowhere in particular. Far away from everywhere they’ve been today is all she needs.  She commands their way into the best room in what passes for the nicest inn this town has to offer; Jaskier gapes a little, but makes no move to get involved.</p><p>Smart boy.</p><p>Yennefer takes the bed closest to the door, dropping onto it with the lack of self-consciousness that comes with bone-deep exhaustion. She hears Jaskier settle in on the other bed, followed by the faint twanging of a lute being removed from its case. She considers objecting, but if she’s honest with herself, she’s so tired he could bang rocks together next to her head and not keep her awake.</p><p>Letting it go proves in short order to be a mistake.</p><p>“Can I ask you something?”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>“You’re the royal mage of Aedirn. Yennefer of Vengerberg.”</p><p>He is nobility, then. A commoner would have no reason to know that off-hand. “And you’re Lord Piss of Fuck-All who thinks naming himself for a flower will fool me.”</p><p>He sighs, a much put-upon sound. “It’s Viscount de Fuck-All, thank you, except I’m no more a viscount these days than you are a royal mage after today.  Look, this will make a great song, but I need you to help me get it right.  I need details.”</p><p>Yennefer rolls over to stare at him.</p><p>“I am genuinely sorry about what happened to the princess,” he continues, “but don’t you think she deserves this? A song to remember her, and the mage who strove valiantly to save her?”</p><p>“It’s not too late to kill you,” she tells him. “I can make everyone forget we’re even here and just leave your body behind.”</p><p>“That’s not a very nice thing to do to the maid. No, I’ve been thinking about it, there are multiple ways to go, I just can’t decide between a tragedy or a fairy tale.”  Inexplicably, he takes Yennefer’s continued flat stare as encouragement. “The truth, or something close to it at least, would be a tragic ballad, harder to play to the masses on a day-to-day basis, but more likely to be considered art by the elite. The fairy tale would be more of a lie, I’d say she ended up taken in by” - he gestures vaguely - “an anonymous shepherd or something, but it would be catchier and more likely to spread and more people would know of her. Of both of you.  But I need more details to know which way to go.”</p><p>Yennefer lets silence stretch out as she keeps staring at the bard, waiting for him to break and start fidgeting or babbling and backtracking.</p><p>When he doesn’t, she says,</p><p>“Both.”</p><p>“Both? How -“</p><p>“Lie to them, then tell them you lied because they don’t deserve the truth. They don’t get to know where she is.”</p><p>Jaskier is watching her attentively as he listens, mouthing her words to himself. “‘And so the world will never know,’” he murmurs, “‘and the sorceress never forget.’  Mm, yes, I can work with that. Give it a bit of a massage and . . . oh, this is going to be a lovely partnership, you’ll see.”</p><p>“‘Partnership,’” Yennefer repeats.</p><p>“Yes!” He brightens. “I need a muse and you’re obviously it, all that talent and courage, I couldn’t <i>ask</i> for more, and once the King of Aedirn is done destroying your reputation to cover his tracks you’ll need someone to patch it back together. We can help each other!”</p><p>Yennefer tries to process all of this, and finds she doesn’t have the energy. “It’s still not too late to kill you,” she says, and turns back to face the wall, closing her eyes.</p><p>She’ll decide in the morning whether she wants to let another man yoke himself to her. It will be easy enough, after all, to shake him off if she doesn’t.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Spoiler alert: Yennefer isn't any better at getting rid of Jaskier than Geralt is (because, like Geralt, she secretly doesn't want to).</p><p>I already mentioned taking dialogue from the ep, but I do want to note specifically that I used that iconic and heartbreaking monologue of Yennefer's without changing a single word. It's just too important to her character to leave it out. I did wonder, though, if that might feel jarring to readers, so I'd be curious to hear feedback on that.</p><p>Feel free to come shout at me about fandom stuff on <a href="https://remindmeofthe.tumblr.com/">tumblr</a>!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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